Sunstalks and Barnacles, an
exhibition of welded steel sculptures by Rebecca Welz — provocative
rhythmic explorations that reflect her captivation with line and
movement as continuum in space — will open at the June Kelly
Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, on November 17. The exhibition will
remain on view through December 19.

“As I make sculpture with my torches and
tools,” says Welz, “I look to find the poetry and rhythms that give
glimpses into the world of nature but also beyond, into the concrete
and also the spiritual. I work to transform round steel rod,
hard and machine rolled, into something that is soft and fluid and
looks like it is moving and still growing.”

Welz speaks of her sculptures as line drawings
in three dimensions that describe and define space, the lines
energetically entwining around and through each other. “They
have a sense of time and suggest to the viewer they have been around
for a long time on this blue planet.”

Welz’s intriguingly innovative approach of
twisting, bending and welding rods of steel challenge the
limitations of her material while simultaneously highlighting the
fragility of many natural forms. The whimsy of fantasy is seen
in the lyrical free-standing, Sunstalks with Copper, 2017 and the
wall installation of labyrinths including Angler Barnacle, 2017.

Welz’s sculptural language of gestural lines
shaped to the slenderest proportions reflects mesmerizing nuances of
her material and imagination. In this exhibition, Welz represents
her pieces in convincing illusion of real space, encouraging the
viewer to physically interact with them, an idea that was radical
until Giacometti’s Surrealist sculpture of the 1930s.

Welz’s investigation of physical space,
weightlessness and pictorial elements of the form, conveys the sense
of naturalness to her creative process, perhaps, similar to that of
the writer, wherein the various parts develop, one from another,
rather than sticking rigidly to a preconceived plan.

“I have seen many wonders, and they are
humbling; majestic sequoias in California that can live to be 3,500
years old; a row of eagle rays in the Caribbean synchronizing their
fins, each one having a different but similar green brocade like
pattern; a full grown green turtle padding onto the beach in
Mexico.”

Perhaps, to that contemplation, could be
added, Welz’s sculptures, organic in that they have the
characteristics of a living system consisting of smoothly running
interacting parts imitative of being shaped by the processes of
Darwinian evolution.

Rebecca Welz, a native of Sausalito,
California, lives and works in New York City. She received a
bachelor’s degree from Empire State College of the City University
of New York, and also studied at the Boston Museum School of Fine
Art. Welz’s work has been shown in numerous one-person and group
exhibitions. She is represented in many corporate and private
collections, including Goldman Sachs; Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen &
Hamilton; Credit Lyonnais, Prudential Life Insurance Corporation,
AXA Corporation, Pfizer Incorporated, and Warburg Pincus, all of New
York.

Born Sausalito, California
Lives and works in New York City

Education

Boston Museum School
of Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts
BA, Empire State College, City University of New York

Solo Exhibitions

2017

Sunstalks and
Barnacles: Sculpture, June Kelly Gallery, New York

2014

Smoke Trees and
Jellyfish: Sculpture and Collages, June Kelly Gallery, New York

AXA Corporation, New
York
Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, New York
Cortec Corporation, New York
Credit Lyonnais, New York
Goldman Sachs & Company, New York
Merck, New Jersey
Mound, Cotton, Wollan, New York
Pfizer Incorporated, New York
Prudential Life Insurance Corporation, New York
Sabre Corporation, Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Sidney Lewis, Richmond, VA
Warburg Pincus, New York
William Kaufman Organization, New York
Windmueller Fine Arts, Scarsdale, New York

Projects

2013

Social
Entrepreneurship: Cultural Exchange, Prototype Development and
FabricationThe Malinalco Project, organized by Pratt professor Rebecca Welz and
Ellen Calmus of
The Corner Project of Malinalco, aims to contribute to
the vitality of the area by creating
revenue through their products.
Twelve designers from the graduate program at Pratt
traveled to central
Mexico to work with weavers, local woodcarvers, and carpenters to
make a
product line representing the local traditions and skills that combines
the
expertise of designers from New York.

2010

The Guyana Project,
organized by Pratt professor Rebecca Welz and Patty Johnson of
North
South Project, aims at developing partnership with the artisan workers,
creating an
exchange rather than a traditional model of manufacturing
used by industrial nations.

2001-2003

Smart Design and OXO;
and Coalition for the Homeless; directed research for Industrial
Design
Graduate Students

1990

Founded The
Association of Women Industrial Designers, AWID, in conjunction with a
group of graduate students. Mounted the first exhibition of women
product design in the
United States, funded by Timex group USA, Inc.,
Middlebury, CT., Knoll Manufacturing
Company, East Granville, PA, New
York, Pratt Manhattan Gallery and the Pratt Schaffler
Gallery, Brooklyn,
NY